Is genocide a more serious crime than mass murder?

[wuushew]

Why is the murder of 100,000 representatively sampled people less serious than the complete annihilation of an identically sized ethnic group? If we answer yes, we are saying that the idea of race or culture in itself has value compared to individual human worth.

Countries, cultures and ethnicities are artificial constructs made up my countless individuals who have chosen to associate into arbitrarily self-identified groups.

Group think and centrism is the primary cause of conflict in the world be racism, religion,nationalism or other. Would it not be beneficial for the entire world to promote a concept of hyper-individualism without the onus or privileges of group association?

[wli]

1. on those scales, the line between genocide and mass murder is blurred

[porphyrian]

2. Biologically speaking, it is.

Completely eliminating the gene pool of an entire subset of humanity is more likely to result in the future elimination of all humans than the murder of a smaller fraction in that any genetic qualities unique to the first group are more likely permanently eliminated from our collective gene pool. It is possible, however, that any murder may have this same result, or that refraining from murder or genocide may prevent a future mutation that saves the human race. The thing is that we don't have enough information to make a definitive statement one way or the other, only statistical probabilities.

[jobycom]

3. I think it is

I think targeting a group that identifies itself one way and slaughtering people in that group just because of who they are is a more serious crime than slaughtering the same number of people randomly. You are, in addition to murder, targetting a group's identity, so that anyone else belonging to that group are left isolated, without anyone else to share the values they hold or the bonds they form or the way of life they created. You are destroying a culture as well as life.

The more serious crime is the killing, of course, but genocide creates additional atrocities in addition to the killing.

[applegrove]

4. Genocide is systematic in a way mass murder is usually not. Because

of the numbers who die & because it usually involves an attack on people for who they are as human beings..rather than just some other projection on humans...it is more dangerous. There is a timeline in genocide & usually groups involved in the planning and the "getting one group to think of one mind" ..it is scarier in my opinion.

It is one thing for murderers to murder. It is truly another when otherwise normal people are turned into murderers.

How ever in the cue of human rights abuses - we do not order the line for victims of murder so much. I just think that genocide makes for longer lines and then lines for rape & lines for cultural genocide and lines for stolen property & lines for people who have had their humanity stolen from them so they could be turned into monsters, lines for orphans who all of a sudden don't have aunts or uncles left to care for them, lines, lines, lines.

[wuushew]

5. I guess I am looking for a way to quantify the value

Lets say it didn't involve a crime per say. Tropical island A has a mixed population of 300 islanders, while island B has a population of 200 aboriginals.

A navy with fixed resources must choose to save the population of either A or B from a completely fatal natural disaster, which does it choose?

[Lannes]

6. Wow didnt know it was mainly the centrists fault

I guess that China's "cultural revolution".The old Soviet Union and the Khmer Rouge was a centrist creation.Didnt know that!

[wuushew]

7. Centrism not Centrist

the belief that one's own group is superior to another as in ethno-centrism

[Lannes]

8. Thats wrong

Centrism promotes moderate policies look it up.Ethno-centrism is a belief based on one's ethnicity.You said "centrism".You may have made that remark unintentionally but nevertheless you did.

[Nikia]

9. There is always a dominate culture

In the past, countless groups have had large numbers of their people killed off. The remaining members of the group were supposed to forget their culture, which was dead (or soon to die), and be absorbed into the culture which did the killing. Some good examples of this was what the European Americans did to the Native Americans and what the European Australians did to the Australian aborigines.
I don't think that was very correct, do you?
Other cultures, like France, didn't really kill too many ethnic minorities, but expected the minorities to be absorbed into French culture. The minorities were expected to sacrafice their culture, while the dominate culture did not in the name of high ideals.
In the United States, everyone is American, but if we want to do well materially and achieve the "American dream" then we'll all adapt to the Americanized WASP culture instead of being culturually black or Hispanic or from whatever culture we came from.
This is the main problem that I see with your plan of elminating all cultures in the name of global egalitarianism and peace.